Budget cooking: chicken and rice

I had some chicken wings thawed (the last bit of my last $8 chicken), some leftover rice, and a few veggies, so I made chicken and rice.

A couple radishes, some cherry tomatoes, a couple cloves of a garlic, a little yellow bell pepper, and a few mushrooms seemed like they'd do the trick. I crushed and sliced the garlic, diced the pepper, sliced up the radishes, diced the mushroom into sizable pieces (maybe 6-8 pieces per shroom), and left the tomatoes whole. Of course, I also had some spinach handy.

I seasoned the wings with the M9 seasoning I've used a few times before because it's fucking delicious. I just pan fried them in olive oil (normal, not extra virgin). It took a few minutes and a little bit of manipulation to get it cooked all the way (and all over...), but I finally got it done. Also, notice those little feather spiny things there? I took those off after it was cooked.

Once the chicken was cooked (and removed from the pan), I dropped in the garlic and about a teaspoon of red chili flakes (kind of measured it by looking at what I poured into my palm and said, "Yeah, that's about teaspoon sized"). I let the garlic and pepper go for about a minute before I poured in a little white wine to scrape the flavor off the bottom of the pan.

I added in the radish, got those slices coated with the liquid, then dropped in the mushroom and tomatoes. Of course, mushrooms being greedy little bastards, all of the liquid in the pan quickly disappeared, so I had to add in some more olive oil (extra virgin this time) when I dropped in the bell pepper. I added the spinach shortly after.

When the spinach was about half cooked, I dropped in my rice and got it all mixed in, then sautéed it all for a few minutes (stirring throughout so the rice wouldn't stick/burn) until the spinach was done and the rice was warmed up. When it was about finished, I added some black pepper and herbes de Provence and gave it one last stir.

Side note: when I cooked the rice the night before, I added in some mushroom-infused olive oil, a bit of salt, and quite a bit of black pepper. It tasted pretty damn spectacular like that. Will do again.

Plating was simple, but I liked the way it looked. Just scooped a line of rice down the middle of the plate and centered the wing on it. I'm not the biggest fan of chicken wings, and I need to figure out a better way to prep them so I don't spend all my time dealing with fucking bones, but we'll get there.

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